musings, recommendations

Cozy Fall Romances

The leaves are changing colour where I live and it’s got me thinking about the kinds of books I love reading when the days start getting shorter and there is a bite in the air. Autumn is settling in so it’s time to get comfortable with a warm blanket or two and a book that matches the atmosphere.

I know many people have wonderful seasonal books they recommend, every season. I’m mostly a mood reader and it takes me on whatever whims each day, even to the last minute right before I pick up a book. However, this autumn, I wanted to curate a number of books that just feel like the perfect fit for this season.

I don’t know how others define an “autumnal” book, but the ones I’m drawn to are those with darker undertones looming in the story to match the shorter daylight hours, or a whimsical fantasy that has just the right amount of hope to lift the spirits from the cold, or a contemporary novel set somewhere between the playfulness of summer and joy of snowy winter days. I’m not sure, actually, if that makes sense to anyone else, but I shall try to justify the following choices below.

Why cozy fall romances though?

I wanted to highlight the beauty of a love story that fits with the emotions an autumn book, as I defined it, would elicit. Although I’d say my genres are more vast than only romances, I find romances are found in a lot of places. And perhaps, it too makes for an additional layer of beauty to appreciate in the autumn season.

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3 star

Review: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doer

When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:
An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.



I recently read this book for my book club, and it was initially supposed to have been picked from a “list of best books.” However, this style of book just misses the mark for me, though I can understand why people enjoy it.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is a tale that is woven around a translated story. We follow five different characters and their point of views, and we really do get to meet all the characters and their whole upbringing. Each character is set in their own unique circumstances, with the theme of stories tying them together. Each character arc is developed over the book, and their stories are woven together in the end in a rather unique and refreshing way.

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top ten tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Atmospheric Books

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.


Hello friends! Today’s TTT prompt is all about those books that just suck you into the setting. We say books are “atmospheric” all the time, or at least I do. What does that really mean?

To me, these books don’t just pick any generic setting. The locale isn’t only a fun fact, but deeply woven into the plotline itself. I consider the following books to only work as well as it does BECAUSE of where the story takes place. If it were to move to anywhere else, I probably wouldn’t even recognize it (or love it)!

Let me know if you agree with my picks in the comments below!

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